Brain Teasers

OK, I spent *way* too much time playing this game last night: Orbitrunner. And because I'm the kind of guy that I am, I wanted to inflict it on you.

It's actually a very interesting bit of gaming, for as simple as seems at first glance. Here's the description from the site:

Control the Sun with your mouse. Use it to manipulate the planets' paths. The Sun's pull gets stronger as planets get closer. If the gravity is at a right angle to the direction of travel, an orbit can form. Make sure planets don't leave the screen or collide!

Via PZ, the latest screed over crackergate comes from a Dallas Morning News editorial. Here's an excerpt - see if it makes your head explode:

The Eucharist is merely a "sad little cracker," Dr. Myers wrote, and the Quran nothing more than words on paper. That may be true, and no one is bound to believe that Catholics or Muslims are correct. What we are bound to do, especially in a pluralist democracy, is show basic respect for the human beings who hold beliefs we don't respect. People don't lose their dignity because they believe implausible, even offensive, things.

There's something about these new atheists, for whom P.Z. Myers is a folk hero, that's profoundly inhuman.

Yeah, you got it right: in one paragraph he states without equivocation that all people deserve respect regardless of beliefs, and in the next he says that atheists are inhuman.

What. The. Fuck?

OK, you've probably heard about the little dust-up that PZ Myers has been having with a bunch of Catholics. If not, here's the initial post at PZ's site, with follow-up posts here, here, here, here, with this being the most recent post, featuring some of the hate mail sent to Myers. That's over 6,000 comments on his blog alone, by my count. And of course lots of others have weighed in on the subject, including UTI alum DarkSyde yesterday at Daily Kos.

I knew it!

[link] Q. Dad, will you explain the theory of relativity to me? I don't understand why time goes slower at great speed.
A. It's because you keep changing time zones. See, if you fly to California, you gain three hours on a five-hour flight, right? So if you go at the speed of light, you gain more time, because it doesn't take as long to get there. Of course, the theory of relativity only works if you're going west.

Man named God arrested for selling cocaine - near a church

TAMPA, FL -- Whether his name is a blessing or curse the man named God Lucky Howard was arrested by undercover detectives for selling cocaine in his neighborhood.

If the delivery of cocaine charge isn't enough Howard is charged with the delivery of cocaine near a church, a school and public housing near North Avon Avenue in Tampa.

* * *

Howard remains in jail on $86,500 bond.

Man, you can't make this shit up.

Jim Downey

So, a fascinating interview with Douglas Richard Hofstadter last year, now translated into English. In it, he makes the following comments concerning Ray Kurzweil's notion of achieving effective immortality by 'uploading' a personality into a machine hardware:

I think Ray Kurzweil is terrified by his own mortality and deeply longs to avoid death. I understand this obsession of his and am even somehow touched by its ferocious intensity, but I think it badly distorts his vision. As I see it, Kurzweil's desperate hopes seriously cloud his scientific objectivity.

I was busy this afternoon, working in my bindery, listening to NPR's All Things Considered with part of my brain while I was working on a 18th century book. And I heard an interesting commentary amongst the news stories. This one. As I listened, this portion stood out:

And I don't buy the argument that a placebo pill is just like putting a "Band-Aid on a boo-boo." We know it doesn't make any difference, but we tell the kids that it does. Sure, there are kids who end up wanting a Band-Aid for every possible problem, but I have never seen an adult Band-Aid addict. I have seen lots of adults who want a pill for every ill.

. . . doesn't mean that the aliens are not out to get you:

Man 'targeted by aliens'

A Bosnian man whose home has been hit an incredible five times by meteorites believes he is being targeted by aliens.

* * *

But Mr Lajic, who has had a steel girder reinforced roof put on the house he owns in the northern village of Gornja Lamovite, has an alternative explanation.

He said: "I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. I don't know what I have done to annoy them but there is no other explanation that makes sense. The chance of being hit by a meteorite is so small that getting hit five times has to be deliberate."

The first meteorite fell on his house in November last year and since then a further four have smashed into his home. The strikes always happen when it is raining heavily, never when there are clear skies.

OK, it's from Ananova, and a quick search didn't turn up any other dependable sources, so take it for what it is worth.

A-ha! It all makes perfect sense now! (Click to embiggen.)

(Original here.)

Got a link to this news story from a friend, who added the comment: "OK, this goes waaaaay beyond stupidity."

Man Shooting Hole Through Wall Kills Wife

DEEPWATER, Mo. -- Officials are trying to decide whether to file charges against a Missouri man who fatally shot his wife while trying to install a satellite TV system in the bedroom of their home.

Patsy Long, 34, of Deepwater, died after being shot in the chest with a .22-caliber handgun on Saturday. Her husband, Ronald Long, fired the shot from the inside of their home after several unsuccessful efforts to punch a hole through the exterior wall using other means.

Henry County sheriff's deputies said the woman was hit by the second of two shots fired by her husband.

*sigh*

Because I have an email address posted over there on the left, I am open to all manner of spam, rants, threats, and general crazy-people appeals to embrace their version of Big Magic Ju-Ju Man. It's no big deal, and goes with the territory. Usually.

But occasionally something will come through that account that gets my attention.

Nah, not the threats. I've long since learned to ignore those. I'm not afraid of hell-fire, and if someone wants to try and kill me there's not much I can do about it beyond what I already do in how I live my life.

But I am amused by some of the more creative things the nuts do, like adding me to a online group called "Serenity Fountain". Hmm. Could be something about Serenity/Firefly (I'm a big fan). Could be a porn site. But no, it's a religious discussion group, with this description:

(I wasn't planning on cross-posting this from my blog, but it took a rather philosophical turn, and upon reflection what I have to say has a lot to do with why I am an atheist. So, I thought I'd share. -Jim )

There is one thing, absolutely, that you know - but most people don't really believe it. That you are alive, and that you are going to die.

"Wait!" you say, "That's two things!"

No, it's not. Life and death are two aspects of the same thing. It is the fundamental duality of our nature. Now, the first part of that equation is generally accepted, but the second part is widely denied - hence the desire to split it into two separate items.

But it hasn't always been like this. Most of human history, people have understood the connection - they were familiar and comfortable with death (even if it wasn't to be desired). I'd even go so far as to say that much of the world today is still this way. It is really only in the last couple-three generations that those in the richer countries have lost a day-to-day connection with death.

Whoa - this is *such* an improvement!

garfield minus garfield

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.

Jim Downey

Hat tip to Tim! Cross posted to Communion of Dreams.

It never ceases to amaze me the things that people will do to themselves in the quest for kicks or 'enlightenment'. Like this:

Diary Entry: 03-22-00

This weekend I had a hole drilled through my skull. I read that this increased one's consciousness permanently. I read about the supposed de-conditioning properties. I read about more parts of the brain working simultaneously as there would be more blood up there to help this happen. The arguments for it all seemed to be quite lengthy, quite detailed, thought out and researched, and very intelligent. The arguments against it were based solely on the opinion that it is 'crazy' and talk like, "What's more conscious than conscious?". I heard from an acquaintance on telephone that she was glad she had done it, felt more mental energy, and had days of brilliance. I came to believe that the key to a permanent consciousness increase was a hole in the skull, to restore the full brain pulsation of infancy.

From the 12/12 New York Times:

Penthouse Buys Group of Social-Networking Sites

While the influx of free and low-cost video has hurt the sale of pornographic videos, the chief executive of the Penthouse Media Group remains so bullish on the sex-related entertainment industry that he is investing $500 million in a group of social networking sites.

Marc H. Bell, chief executive of Penthouse Media, said the company had acquired Various Inc. and its subsidiaries as part of a plan to expand its reach. Various operates more than 25 networking sites and says it has a member base of more than 260 million consumers, about 1.2 million of them paying subscribers.

260 million? That's like more than the adult population of the US, isn't it? Well, nevermind. The bigger question is why am I writing about this - just more smut-related news from an immoral, atheistic libertine?

Not exactly. Here's another bit from that same article:

I, for one, welcome our new super-intelligent Chimpanzee masters.

[link] Young Chimp Outscores College Students in Memory Test

Malcolm Ritter in New York
Associated Press
December 3, 2007

Japanese researchers pitted young chimpanzees against human adults in two tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.

That challenges the belief of many people, including a number of scientists, that "humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions," said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

"No one can imagine that chimpanzees—young chimpanzees at the age of five—have a better performance in a memory task than humans," he said in a statement.

Matsuzawa, a pioneer in studying the mental abilities of chimps, said even he was surprised. He and colleague Sana Inoue report the results in Tuesday's issue of the journal Current Biology.

Damn dirty apes!

My wife passed on an item posted over on Forum Wales which I found of interest. Not saying that I "believe" or anything, but it is definitely something to take a look at. It's a short clip, and you should turn your sound up a bit:

And in the true spirit of Halloween I give you this British Car Ad that was never run:

This is a car advertisement from Great Britain. When they finished filming the ad, the film editor noticed something moving along the side of the car, like a ghostly white mist. They found out that a person had been killed a year earlier in that exact same spot.

The ad was never put on TV because of the unexplained ghostly phenomenon. Watch the front end of the car as it clears the trees in the middle of the screen and you’ll see the white mist crossing in front of the car then following it along the road….Spooky!

Is it a ghost, or is it simply mist? You decide. If you listen to the ad, you’ll even hear the cameraman whispering in the background about it near the end of the commercial.

Car Ad

Odd little news item:

LONDON (Reuters) - A surge in naked sleepwalking among guests has led one of Britain's largest budget hotel groups to re-train staff to handle late-night nudity.

Travelodge, which runs more than 300 business hotels in Britain, says sleepwalking rose seven-fold in the past year, and 95 percent of the somnambulants are scantily clad men.

"We have seen an increased number of cases over the years so it is important that our staff know how to help sleepwalking when it arises," Leigh McCarron, the chain's sleep director, said in a statement.

One tip in the company's newly released "sleepwalkers guide" tells staff to keep towels handy at the front desk in case a customer's dignity needs preserving.

Article goes on to explain some of the common causes of sleepwalking, but curiously neglects to mention one which I have heard about: Zolpidem, known more commonly by the brand name "Ambien". Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

Ol' Joe Smith may have had the right idea about polygamy, after all. Well, at least the evolutionary historical idea, anyway.

Men age faster 'because of Stone Age sex'

The reason that women outlive men by an average of around five years is due to sex, harems and violence in the Stone Age, according to a study published today.

Scientists have struggled to understand why men only tend to live to an average age of 75 while women live to an average of 80.

Now it seems that the reason is that our prehistoric male ancestors kept female harems and fought over them to procreate: because male life was nasty, brutish and short, evolutionary forces focused on making males big and strong, rather than long lived.

See? He really was just trying to get back to the way our ancestors lived. Man, talk about your "old time religion"...

Jim Downey

That line is from this post in a discussion over at BoingBoing about a new book by the Vatican Astronomer, Brother Guy Consolmagno. Full context: the author previously described himself as an "agnostic", and in defense of that position says this:

I would turn that question around and ask if an atheist is sure that there is no 3rd planet orbiting around the star in Orion's left shoulder. We can't see it or demonstrate in any way that it exists, therefore by atheist standards, it must not exist?

Or perhaps we can use atheistic reasoning to suggest that Star Trek Warp Drives, teleporters, holodecks and other "Treknology" are all completely impossible, because physics can't currently produce those effects and therefore, they do not exist.

Atheists seem to suffer from a lack of imagination.